ERA20CA244 · NEW Kolb Aircraft Co LLC KOLB FLYER SS
NEW Kolb Aircraft Co LLC KOLB FLYER SS · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Plant City Municipal Airport (PCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA244
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
NEW Kolb Aircraft Co LLC KOLB FLYER SS
- Aircraft type
- New Kolb KOLB FLYER SS
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N38KF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Plant City Municipal Airport (PCM), Plant City, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2008)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control on ground
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to prepare the student pilot for a solo cross-country flight. After taxiing to the end of the runway, the flight instructor told the student to perform a short field takeoff. The student pilot described that there was a crowd at the airport café, and that the flight instructor stated, “let’s show them what aviation is all about.” The student pilot said that the takeoff roll was normal, and as he pulled back on the flight control stick and began to pitch for a best climb attitude, the airplane struggled to fly. The student pilot then felt back pressure on the control stick and noted that the flight instructor was pulling the stick back more but had not initiated a positive transfer of controls. The airplane then veered to the left, the flight instructor pitched the nose down, and the airplane struck a berm off the left side of the runway before it “cartwheeled” twice and came to rest. During the accident sequence the airplane’s left wing and empennage were substantially damaged. The student pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to maintain control of the airplane following an unannounced transfer of flight control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA244
- Event ID
- 20200713X80528
- Case number
- ERA20CA244
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 504a707f588cadddd9ac02ad170a3d708be71b94217313e709017a0a92ba30c4; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:07:18.126Z.